I suspect the reason photography sometimes gets slighted by the fine arts, like oil painting, is that in the case of photography many people think, give me that great/special camera and I could do that too. e is one of the few who can say give me the brushes, paints and canvas and I create too, most of us already know we could not use this medium to convey a feeling, a moment or a compelling image. Here she is either dreaming about having her own gallery like Doug and Hilary or looking for inspiration.....

Do the ending seasons sink into the depths of your psyche even before you realize they segueing? In retrospect some of this past weeks images have a recognition of transition in them, that is completely unplanned.

Moving vehicles are not always a good platform for shooting photos from... but this week I have found a number of images from inside of them.... This one during a summer weekends days Boston Duck Tour.

If you are reading this, then Falmouth's newest restaurant is open! The Glass Onion! e and I where fortunate enough to get a sneak preview. All the dishes were very good, but the bread pudding was the best I have ever had.

Ever wish you traveled around with a band? Most people probably wish this so they could be serenaded or so their life could have a soundtrack. Me - I want to shoot them in all the lawn chairs in front of the Christmas Tree shop.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

The book of quotations on the side of the road during the road race seemed a little strange.... but the best quote of the day was from the runner who said - who decided to put the hill at the end of the race, in perfect exhausted sarcasm.

phoenix ended up at the vet for an allergic reaction to something. She ended up on the juice. There is a lot of controversy as to whether or not all her records should now have an asterisk next to them.

In other news Roland the bear was certainly relieved that she would not be bothering him on this day.

Team allszplat made a quick half week jaunt to Maine. Booth Bay, Orono and a lunch in Bar Harbor. It was nice to get out and see some new places again. That said this is not the enviroment I would choose to shoot first. Too rustic, too familiar, too easy.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

It turns out elective surgery's, like stitches in the nose, by Dr's, if they even call them that at the Disney World infirmary, do not like to begin until they have a note from ones parents. So after sitting around for a long time in the waiting room... I was brought to a Dr's lab, for the first time I remember, then and now. The nurse came in and explained what was to happen. The pain from the anesthesia, how this would prevent the Dr's sowing from hurting etc. Then she asked did I want anything before they began. I looked around the little room. Cotton swabs, metallic Dr. stuff, lights, towels. I required a towel. The nurse tried to reassure me that they would clean up the wound if it started bleeding.... this was not why I wanted the towel. I had seen enough westerns to know that I needed a bullet to bite on. I also had surveyed the scene well enough to know that she was unlikely to be able to provide a bullet. So I said to her. "To bite on"Five stitches they sent me and Ruth and Percy on our way with instructions not to get the wound wet and others that I have long forgotten. The wet biz was a drag at river country which would have probably been my favorite part of the trip. At the end of the week when I saw my parents at the airport I cried for the first time, I figured I was going to be in trouble for hurting myself while on vacation with the grandparents.

If you look closely you can see the scar in the middle of my nose. As a youngster my grandparents brought me to Disney World. Darting towards the stairs from the race car track by the Tea Cups my grandmother yelled out "Don't run you will fall and hurt yourself......" My mind responded "pft". Half way up the steps I tripped and my nose met step. Unfazed I popped up and continued to the top of the steps where a child stared in horror at me. I wiped the sweat from my brow. Then still today I see in slow motion my hand sweep around into view. Crimson and wet the palm looked as if I had put my hand into a sheet of red paint.

I often tell e that shooting is my version of fishing. Like fishing it seems some days they are biting, and other days not so much. On the not so much days, I keep casting and hoping that I get a nibble on something. When a roll starts it can last for minutes, hours and sometimes days. Then the lines go dormant as quick as they can go hot. And like fishing I no longer dream of the big one, I dream of the ultimate string.

“We often photograph events that are called 'news' , " Cartier-Bresson told Byron Dobell of "Popular Photography" magazine in 1957, "but some tell the news step by step in detail as if making an accountant's statement. Such news and magazine photographers, unfortunately, approach an event in a most pedestrian way. It's like reading the details of the Battle of Waterloo by some historian: so many guns were there, so many men were wounded - you read the account as if it were an itemization. But on the other hand, if you read Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma, you're inside the battle and you live the small, significant details... Life isn't made of stories that you cut into slices like an apple pie. There's no standard way of approaching a story. We have to evoke a situation, a truth. This is the poetry of life's reality."- from www.magnumphotos.com

Did I mention that this week was going to feature a lot of self portraits and black and white? My mother used to claim that 208 was her lucky number. Even as a youngster I thought that this had a digit or two too many digits to really be a lucky number. But what the heck, maybe I will pick a lucky number....let see my new lucky number is 211,208 with a little nod to the mum's number picking wisdom.

This would be another candidate for a pano crop and worth a look bigger by clicking on the image. Every year I tell myself that I am going to do the rope swing at the punch bowl.... each year the summer seems to slip by before I get a chance or remember. I guess I should just put it on the calendar.

So after switching over to b&w at the Paulo N. show I got the monochrome in me again. Most of the following week was/is spent shooting in black and white as well as self portraits and of course, the pup.